No. Citing the source of a work you use is good academic practice and helps you avoid plagiarism, but citation alone does not mean you are permitted to copy the work.
In order to legally copy a copyright-protected work for use in teaching materials, assignments, or theses/dissertations, your use must be permitted by one of the following:
- explicit permission from the copyright owner;
- use of an "insubstantial" amount, e.g., a typical short quote of a few sentences;
- a users' rights exception in the Copyright Act, such as fair dealing;
- the terms of a license, like those the SFU Library has for ejournals and ebooks [note: these licenses typically don't permit use in a thesis/dissertation]; or
- the terms of an open license, such as a Creative Commons license, applied to the work by its copyright owner.
Note: The information obtained from or through this website is provided as guidelines for using works for educational purposes and is not intended to constitute legal advice. Contact copy@sfu.ca with any questions. The Copyright Officer is not a lawyer or legal expert in copyright law and is able to provide a professional and not a legal opinion. A professional opinion is offered for information purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal advice.
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